Many Nigerians, especially Southerners, are very comfortable stereotyping and wrongly branding Fulanis as marauders who kidnap and abduct people for ransom. Sadly, this came to a head in March of this year (2025), when sixteen innocent hunters of mixed Hausa, Fulani, and Northern minority descent were wrongly stereotyped as kidnappers and lynched by townspeople.
May their souls rest in peace, and may God grant them Al-Jannah Firdaus.
However, recent revelations by a particularly courageous Governor have revealed data showing that that particular labelling was not based on fact or data.
In fact, according to him, the statistics show that in more than 90% of the cases, it is the locals who abduct their people for money and then put the blame on the Fulani.
So, why are we in the South comfortable with naming and shaming the Fulani over criminal conduct such as kidnapping and abducting, even when and where they may or may not be guilty, but blackmail anyone who tries to point out the obvious: That mainly Southern Nigerians are creating a horrible image for Nigeria abroad as persons given to criminality, especially fraud, romance scams and particularly drug related offences?
I have seen the data of Nigerians involved in criminality abroad when I was a close confidante of a sitting President, and it is damning to particular states in Southern Nigeria.
After my stint at Aso Rock, I travelled the world as a private citizen, and officials in Peru and Cambodia allowed me to tour their prisons.
In fact, and I am willing to swear to this on oath in court, in Cambodia, when they see your green passport, it is almost as if they press a red panic button. Immigration and Drug Law Enforcement officials will gather where you are and begin making a fuss.
And can you blame them? If you know the number of Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese and Gaon women who have been executed in Indonesia and Malaysia for drug related offences because their Nigerian boyfriends from Southern Nigeria convinced them to go on a romantic weekend to these countries, only for them to get a phone call on the way to the airport that their father had died, and then telling these women that, ‘Baby take this $1000. Go. I will join you tomorrow. Let me mourn my father’, you, too, will understand their frenzied anxiety at the sight of a Nigerian passport.
It has gotten so bad that in Thailand, they now ask for your Nigerian ethnicity, for obvious reasons. If you are from Northern Nigeria, they relax their guard. If you follow me on social media, you will know I have been to Thailand.
Moreover, I have video evidence of this. The Thai authorities have stereotyped one particular Nigerian ethnicity at their various international airport. They have a popular reality show which is almost exclusively devoted to catching Nigerians involved in drug dealing. Please Google it. It is on YouTube.
Identifying the regions and states of origins of Nigerians who go abroad and spoil various countries for other Nigerians, while giving Nigeria a bad name that makes our green passport unwanted and unwelcome, is not tribalism.
Do not shield the identity of their ethnicity, state, and region. Embarrass these syndicates by exposing them. Go to these countries and get a roster of the Nigerians in their prisons. Create a database and make it public with their names, offences, states of origin, and ethnicities.
When this is done, Governors, traditional rulers and elders of these states and communities will be forced to deal with the cultural issues pushing their youths to pursue money at any and every cost.
However, if we allow these ethnicities, states and communities to blackmail the Federal Government and its Ministries and Agencies with their usual defence mechanisms of ‘You hate us’, ‘You are marginalising us’, then the Nigerian passport will continue to attract odium, scorn, contempt, and suspicion in various countries.
𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗔𝗽𝗽 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗧𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗔𝘀 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽!
